The present invention relates to an NC controlling system for controlling peripheral equipment appended to an NC machine tool.
In an NC machine tool, the operation of the NC machine tool and the operation of equipment appended to the NC machine tool have to cooperate with each other. For instance, in case of the operation of a NC circular table installed in a table of the NC machine tool for performing the rotation and indexing of a workpiece (hereinafter referred to as an NC circular table), the operation of a tool, a table or the like of the NC machine tool has to be performed in cooperation with the operation of the rotary table of the NC circular table.
By the way, such an NC machine tool and an NC controlling system for controlling the NC circular table are categorized into the following two types:
i) One for writing a control program of the NC circular table to a controlling program of the NC machine tool and directly controlling the NC circular table in accordance with the controlling program; and
ii) One for providing control programs for the NC machine tool and the NC circular table, respectively, for controlling the NC circular table in accordance with an NC controlling signal issued from the NC machine tool (i.e., so-called M-signals, a pair of contact signals of a start signal and an end signal), that is, one for cooperating the control program of the NC circular table with the control program of the NC machine tool.
Currently, in many cases, the NC machine tool has no function to directly control the NC circular table in accordance with the control program of the NC machine tool as in the above-described type i) and the above-described type ii) of the NC controlling system with a high versatility has been widely used.
However, the type ii) of the NC controlling system suffers from the following problems. Namely, since the administration such as inputting, compiling, storing or the like is effected separately to the NC machine tool and the NC circular table, respectively, and the control programs of the NC machine tool and the NC circular table are caused to cooperate with each other, if there is an error in inputting, compiling, storing or the like of the control program on one side, due to the difference in program between the two, it is impossible to effect the exact working operation.
Accordingly, in the art, there is a demand to solve the above-noted defects.
In order to meet the above-described demand, an object of the present invention is to provide an NC controlling system that may use an annotation part of the controlling program of the NC machine tool as a control program for appended equipment.
According to the present invention, there is provided an NC controlling system comprising an NC machine tool provided with a control program and appended equipment used together with the machine tool to be numerically controlled, wherein a control program of the appended equipment is written in an annotation part of the control program of the NC machine tool, and a reading unit is provided for identifying and reading the control program of the appended equipment written in the annotation part of the control program of the NC machine tool.
In the NC controlling system, the appended equipment has a controller for numerically controlling the appended equipment, and the reading unit is provided in the controller for identifying and reading the control program of the appended equipment written in the annotation part of the control program of the NC machine tool.
In the NC controlling system, a start letter row for identifying the control program of the appended equipment by the reading unit is written in the annotation part of the program for controlling the NC machine tool.
In the NC controlling system, an NC circular table is used as the appended equipment.
Also, according to another aspect of the present invention, there is provided an NC controlling system comprising an NC machine tool that may output and input a control program provided in an NC controlling apparatus to an outside input/output unit through an interface, an NC circular table used together with the NC machine tool to be numerically controlled and a controller for imputing a control program of the NC circular table to the NC circular table, wherein a control program of NC circular table is written in an annotation part of the control program of the NC machine tool, a reading unit is provided in the controller for identifying and reading the control program of the NC circular table written in the annotation part of the control program of the NC machine tool, a control program of the NC circular table written in the annotation part is read out of a control program of the NC machine tool outputted through the interface of the NC machine tool by the controller, and the NC circular table is operated by the control of the controller and control signals out of the NC machine tool.
The control program of the appended equipment is written in the annotation part of the control program of the NC machine tool. The control program of the appended equipment is read out by, for example, the reading unit provided in the controller for controlling the appended equipment. The appended equipment may be operated in accordance with the control program of the appended equipment.
Since the NC machine tool disregards the annotation part as meaningless information, there is no fear that the control program of the appended equipment written in the annotation part adversely affects the operation of the machine tool.
With such an arrangement according to the present invention, it is possible to provide an NC controlling system that is superior in practical use and workability and that may perform the administration of inputting, compiling and storing the control program of the NC machine tool and the control program of the appended equipment together as one program in the NC controlling apparatus.